


Curly Hair and Jelly Shoes

by VoiceOfNurse



Series: Que Sera [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Daddy!Steve, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, Fun, Gen, Little!Bucky - Freeform, Playing, Playing with bears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-07 00:31:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8776051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoiceOfNurse/pseuds/VoiceOfNurse
Summary: In which Bucky meets an actual six-year-old, and the world doesn't end.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been in a bit of a writer-slump recently, probably because my heating and hot water are out and I hibernate like a bear. The forever awesome OMOWatcher got out her sharp stick to get me writing again. As always, thank you Lauralot for letting me build sandcastles in your sandbox.

“I’m not sure this is such a good idea…” Bucky couldn’t for the life of him think what had made him agree to this. It was going to be a disaster. “Something’s going to go wrong, Steve, _really_ wrong, and Maggie will never talk to me ever again.”

Steve, who, if Bucky was being honest, was probably the one who had encouraged his little self to reach out and make friends, patted his arm. “It’s not going to go wrong. Maggie’s your friend, and we’re in the tower; nothing can happen here.”

“I’m going to traumatize the kid.” It had seemed like such a good idea when Bucky had been little. He’d actually been really excited, but now he couldn’t seem to get out of his adult mindset, with its very grownup worries. Like what might happen if Maggie’s six-year-old daughter made a wrong move and ended up face to face with the Winter Soldier instead.

Steve didn’t seem to be taking his concerns very seriously, because he was still slowly but surely ushering Bucky along the corridor towards the lifts, rather than doing something sensible like locking the whole floor down until there was no longer a small, vulnerable person to worry about. “Buck, if I thought for a second that anything bad was going to happen, then I wouldn’t be so okay with this. Do you really, honestly think I’d let it go that badly wrong?”

There was just a hint of reproach in Steve’s tone, which never made Bucky feel particularly spectacular, but this time it was worse, because Steve was _right_. Saying that everything was bound to go wrong ultimately assumed that Steve would be unable to keep one small girl safe, when in reality he’d been shielding far more than that from the Winter Soldier for months on end. Steve was probably the most capable person to deal with potential catastrophe, and yet Bucky didn’t feel any better about taking the risk.

“Look, how about we just go down there, and if you really don’t like it, you can go back upstairs?” Steve sounded far too reasonable; Bucky quashed the urge to cross his arms and scowl about the whole thing. “Maggie said her daughter’s been really excited about meeting you. It wouldn’t be very nice to disappoint her.”

It wouldn’t be _very nice_ to crush her with his metal arm, or stab her with some unlikely sharp object, Bucky wanted to say. He didn’t, because he wouldn’t be able to bear the look on Steve’s face if he did, but the worry was still there. “I don’t know. I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Steve sighed, the sad one he kept in reserve for when there were _feelings_. Bucky very nearly cringed. “Okay. If you really don’t want to, then I’m not going to make you. I just thought it would be nice for you to spend time with your friend, maybe make a new one, too. But I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to.”

Deep down, Bucky _did_ want to, though. He wanted to see Maggie, who had promised to bring some watercolour pencils for them to try out, and her daughter Millie, who Bucky had heard a great deal about but never actually encountered. He wanted to do something relatively normal, spend an afternoon with friends, without having to worry that he’d do irreparable damage to someone.

“I guess,” Bucky said at length, teeth worrying at his thumbnail, “We could go down just for a minute. I don’t want Maggie to think I don’t want to see her.”

Logically, he knew Maggie wouldn’t mind him cancelling on short notice, but at the same time Bucky didn’t actually want to miss out on seeing his friend because of his stupid- everything. He just wanted to be normal, just once. Honestly, how hard was it to walk out of the elevator, smile, and not maim anyone? Apparently very hard, if you were Bucky.

Steve had clearly worked out that if Bucky hesitated much more, he’d flee back to this room and not come back out again for the rest of the day, because seconds later there was a strong arm wrapped around Bucky’s shoulders, propelling him into the lift. “They’ll be so pleased to see you,” he reassured as the doors snicked shut behind them, cutting off Bucky’s escape. “And we don’t have to stay, not if you don’t want to. We can just say hello and then go back upstairs if that’s all you’re up for.”

By the time he’d finished speaking, it was already too late to run away; the elevator had arrived at the common floor, doors opening to reveal Maggie already sitting in a chair beside the window, an over-sized art pad resting on her knees. She looked up when the doors opened, smiling brightly.

“Bucky, hi! I hope you don’t mind that I got started without you, but I thought it would be better if we actually had a picture to put water on, so you could see how the pencils work.” To demonstrate, she turned the pad around, revealing a slew of blues and yellows. Distracted, Bucky tilted his head to one side, trying to work out what the picture was actually supposed to be.

Maggie saw him looking and laughed, slightly embarrassed, but mostly amused. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m a _terrible_ artist. I was trying to draw the skyline, but then I realised I have no idea how to do perspective, so I just added the sun. It doesn’t really matter, anyway; I thought we could get it wet and see what happens.”

“Um.” Bucky didn’t want to tell Maggie her picture was awful, because that would be mean, but he was stuck thinking that Steve was a much better artist. Steve had painted a skyline on a big canvass for Clint’s birthday, and Bucky had been able to match the buildings to the real skyline, it was that good. Maggie’s drawing didn’t really look like much of anything, though if he squinted his eyes up he thought he could probably make out a bird. Maybe a cloud.

“You can say it’s awful. Mommy’s rubbish at pictures,” a small voice said from the vicinity of Bucky’s left knee, making him jump and stumble back a step. The child who had snuck up on him while he was distracted peered at him with wide hazel eyes, then grinned. “Are you Bucky? You are, aren’t you!”

She was a whole lot more tiny that Bucky had been expecting, and for a moment the sheer fragility of her took him aback. Surely, she was smaller than a child her age should be, all the way down there, with her wispy brown curls going every which way and her skinny little limbs poking out of a slightly too-big sundress.

While he was having an internal debate about whether the vibrations from his footsteps would knock her down or not, Millie sidled a little closer. The very tip of her tongue poked through the gap where her front teeth should have been when she smiled. “It’s okay, Mommy said you’re shy. I’m Millie; only Nanan calls me Matilda.”

Apparently satisfied with introductions, despite the fact that Bucky was still staring at her like she might implode at any moment, Millie wrapped her hand around Bucky’s (the metal one, he realised with a spike of alarm), and gave him a tug, merrily exclaiming, “Wow! You’re strong!” when Bucky remained frozen to the spot.

“Millie, why don’t you say hello to Mr Rogers, and maybe give Bucky a moment to get used to you, okay?” Maggie seemed torn between fondly exasperated and embarrassed, watching her precocious daughter.

“Okay Mommy! Hello, Mr Rogers. Are you really Captain America?” Millie’s smile was just as bright when she turned it on Steve, and it gave Bucky a few seconds to pull himself back together again. It helped that Steve, for all of his PR experience, seemed to be a little lost for words as well.

“Um, yes, yes, I am. But right now I’m at home, with my friends, so it’s just Steve, or Mr Rogers, whichever you’d rather call me.”

Millie thought this over for a moment, tapping one bright blue jelly-shoe, before offering Steve a slow nod. “When I went to Tommy’s birthday party, Aunt Lala said that everyone should call her Lale, but that’s silly, because she’s Aunt Lala, and Tommy’s mommy. And you’re Bucky’s daddy, so that makes you Uncle Steve.”

For a moment, Steve just gaped down at Millie, who seemed totally oblivious to his discomfort. Thankfully, he crouched down with a small smile before she caught on that the adults around her were exchanging faintly uncomfortable looks. “You know about me being Bucky’s daddy?” he asked quietly, clearly trying to keep his tone from sounding harsh.

Frowning a little, Millie nodded her head. “Yes. Mommy said so. Why?”

Bucky didn’t know where to look; at Maggie, who had apparently told her daughter all about him, or Steve, who was going to have to explain it now. He closed his eyes instead. The whole situation would have been so, so much easier if he had been feeling little, but he wasn’t. He was stuck uncomfortably somewhere not all together big, but definitely _not_ little enough to find it any less than mortifying.

“Well, what do you think about that?” Steve sounded a little lost, as though he was expecting some form of eruption from Bucky or Millie. Bucky, for his part, was too embarrassed to say anything. Millie just huffed.

“I think I’d like to play with Bucky now, please?” She sounded as though Steve was asking her a trick question, and when Bucky cracked an eye open to look at her, Millie was frowning at Steve like he was stupid. “Has he done being shy now?”

“I don’t think he’s quite done being shy yet, baby.” Maggie was smiling faintly, quite relaxed in her chair despite her daughter’s rather awkward topic of conversation. “Why don’t you tell Bucky and Uncle Steve about the green lady, hm, and what we learned from that?”

Millie nodded enthusiastically, thumping down onto her bottom on the rug and pulling impatiently at Steve’s boot until he joined her. Hesitant, but uncomfortable being the only one left standing, Bucky squatted down beside them as well. “We saw the green lady walking down the street,” Millie was saying, clearly excited to tell her story. “She had flowers in her hair, and a really pretty dress on. And a baby! But her baby was all pink, like you, Uncle Steve.”

“The lady had a green dress on?” Bucky asked despite himself, his mind caught on Lady Liberty for some reason.

Millie shook her head. “Nope. Her skin was green, like Daddy’s is pink and mine and Mommy’s is brown. I wanted to go touch it, but Mommy says it’s not very nice to ask people that when you don’t know them.” The ‘silly mommy’ wasn’t actually added, but heavily implied when Millie glanced over at her mother.

“But some people looked at the lady funny, and I asked Mommy why, and Mommy said it was because the lady didn’t have pink skin, or brown skin, but that they were silly for looking at her funny. Because _obviously_ she was a mommy, and they come in all sorts of different types, see?”

Bucky didn’t quite know what to say to that, but Steve was smiling again, so obviously something was going right. “And daddies come in lots of different types as well?” he asked.

“Of course,” Millie said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “ _My_ daddy isn’t the same as Tommy’s daddy, or Pippa’s daddy, and Shauni doesn’t even _have_ a daddy.”

“And I’m Bucky’s daddy, and that’s okay.” Steve’s lips tilted up at the corner, just a little, thought for a moment his eyes were suspiciously damp.

Millie, for her part, just looked at him like he was a little bit stupid. They probably were, Bucky realised. Kids often didn’t even notice half the things that adults tended to sneer about, and most of the time when they _did_ notice, they had better things to do.

Millie certainly did, as after another brief glance at Steve to check he wasn’t going to come out with any other odd questions, she took Bucky’s hand again.  “Okay!” she chirped. “Can we go play, now? I brought lots of toys!”

~*~

Millie, as it turned out, talked _a lot_ if you gave her the opportunity, and didn’t seem to care in the least that Bucky didn’t really say very much back. By the time she’d emptied out the frankly massive bag that had come to the tower with her, explaining in great detail how each of her toys and games worked, Bucky knew that Millie’s father was a weatherman on the television, the names of all of Aunt Lala’s many cats, and had been given a detailed description of the inside of Maggie’s house.

“And this is Storm-Boy, he’s _special_.” Millie finished, opening the big middle pocket of the bag and extracting a medium sized, light blue bear. Bucky found himself reaching out automatically to take the toy when offered, flesh fingers meeting soft fur before he even knew what he was doing.

 _Traitor_ , Bucky Bear muttered, sore that so far, he had been trapped in Bucky’s backpack. Bucky had chosen to stow him carefully inside before heading downstairs, beset as he had been by images of blood and small, dead children. Now, he was feeling rather silly about the whole thing.

“Is he your favorite?” Bucky asked. He was starting to feel small, fingers still tracing lines in Storm-Boy’s surprisingly fine fur. Bucky could see the weave underneath, and wondered if that was normal, or if there was something wrong with the bear. Maybe his hair was falling out…

Bucky Bear, displeased as he was, shared a few choice words about bears whose fur fell out, and what would happen to them if it turned out to be catching. Bucky wanted to reassure him, maybe get him out of the bag so he could see there probably wasn’t anything wrong with Millie’s bear, but he was also just a tiny bit afraid that it _was_ catching, and Bucky Bear might end up bald.

Millie, oblivious as she was to Bucky’s inner monologue, just smiled serenely. “He’s the best, but he’s not normally allowed out, just in case I get him wet or dirty. Mommy said today was okay, though, because we’d just be playing indoors. He’s not allowed near any of the paint, though, because he can’t go in the wash.”

 _Only a highly trained and durable bear would be able to handle the wash,_ was Bucky Bear’s scathing comment on the subject. Bucky really hoped Millie didn’t speak bear, because Storm-Boy was clearly very important to her, and he couldn’t imagine she’d like anyone insulting her friend. The bear in question seemed to stare accusingly up at Bucky, big brown eyes faintly sad.

“Bears shouldn’t really go near paint, it messes up their fur,” Bucky muttered, giving Storm-Boy an apologetic stroke before handing him back to Millie. “I have lots of Bears.”

“My other bears can all go in the washing machine,” Millie explained. Storm-Boy was easily as big as her torso, and she sat with her arms around him, her chin resting between his ears. “But Storm-Boy can’t get wet. See?”

There was a soft click from somewhere, and suddenly Bucky really did see, because Millie’s bear was glowing. There were obviously lights hidden inside him somewhere, cycling slowly between colours and shining up through his fine hair.

Bucky gaped for a moment. “There are bears that _light up_?” he asked, unable to keep the grin from his voice. Bucky Bear wasn’t best pleased, but Bucky thought he might be just the tiniest bit jealous. It wasn’t every day they met a bear that lit up, after all.

“Daddy got him for me, when we moved house,” Millie explained. “My new bedroom was _scary_. There’s a big closet, and there was a monster living in it!”

“Mommy tried to get rid of it,” Maggie chipped in from the other side of the room, where she was watching Daddy drawing with the watercolour pencils. “But this was one stubborn monster.”

Millie screwed her face up, hugging Storm-Boy a little closer. “The monster spray didn’t work, even the one that smells like strawberries. I had to sleep in Mommy and Daddy’s bed.”

Bucky had never had problems with monsters living in his closet, probably because Bucky Bear was far scarier than any stupid closet monster. Millie, of course, hadn’t had Bearvengers to keep her safe. “I didn’t know you could get spray for monsters,” he said, speculative. “How does it work?” He wondered if it would work on the people that said awful things about him; the ones that Daddy didn’t want him to know anything about.

“You have to get a grownup to spray it where the monster is, and it makes them go away.” Millie explained. “But the New House Closet Monster was tougher than that. I think it had a gas mask or something. Because it was _still there_ after Mommy sprayed it.”

Maybe monster spray would work on The Asset, when he popped up and wouldn’t go away again… he’d have to ask Maggie to get Daddy some. “Do monsters have gas masks?” Bucky could think of a few monsters who covered up their faces, and he shuddered just a bit, dragging his bag down off his shoulders so that he could get at Bucky Bear.

Millie’s expression was dark, her tone grave. “This one did. But then Daddy got me Storm-Boy, and he sat on a chair outside the closet all night. His magic stopped the monster getting out of the closet and going under the bed, so I could sleep in my new bedroom again.”

“Oh, he’s a magic bear?” Bucky Bear was scowling when he emerged from the backpack, but Bucky stroked his ears and whispered to him, promising that he would always be the best bear for Bucky, and that he didn’t have to worry just because Millie’s bear had magic powers. Bucky Bear grumbled a bit, but he was pleased really, Bucky could tell.

“Yeah! He makes monsters disappear. You have to write what the monster looks like, and what makes it scary, and put it in his pocket just here.” Millie flipped Storm-Boy over to show Bucky the zipper on his back. “Then he shines his light, and the monster goes away. Is that your bear?” She was very close, all of a sudden, peering excitedly at Bucky Bear. “He’s got a little superhero costume!”

“He’s a highly trained operative,” Bucky explained, even as he warned Bucky Bear not to scowl at his new friend. “He works with the Bearvengers.”

Millie wriggled excitedly, flashing another of her gap-toothed grins. “You have Avengers bears? Can we play with them? Storm-Boy likes adventures, and I’m sure we can find something scary for them to beat up! Do you have any bad-guy bears?”

Frowning, Bucky shook his head. “No, they take it turns to be the bad guy. Not Bucky Bear or Captain Ameribear, though. They’re always the good guys.”

“Really? You need a bad guy! I have Mr Catface, he’s mean. And evil. He helps me play superheroes.” Whoever this ‘Mr Catface’ was, Millie sounded surprisingly fond of him. Bucky pulled a face, puzzled.

Maggie laughed, apparently listening to their conversation. “Mr Catface is a crochet cat that Nanan made when Millie was born. Nanan got his face a bit wrong though, and he always looks like he’s about to eat you.”

“Mr Catface is a great bad guy,” Millie chirped. “He gobbles up all the cakes at our tea parties, and then we play superheroes because he wants to eat all the  cakes in the _world_. He never wins, though, so that’s okay.”

Bucky Bear had a few ideas on what could be done about this Mr Catface character, but Bucky didn’t think it was very nice to pick apart someone’s seams and pull all their stuffing out just because they ate a lot of cake. “What happens to Mr Catface when he loses?” he asked, anxious. Maybe Mr Catface was like the Commander… Bucky swallowed against a squirmy sensation in his tummy.

Millie didn’t look very worried, though. “Nothing happens to him, silly,” she said with a smile. “He gets told off, and if he’s been _really_ naughty, he has to sit on the bad-girl stool and _think about what he’s done_.” This was said with utmost gravity. “But he’s always forgiven by bedtime, even if he’s really, really naughty, because being angry after bedtime isn’t allowed.”

“It’s not?” Bucky had never heard of that rule. He was pretty sure a lot of people had broken it in the tower.

“Nope. It’s Mommy and Daddy’s special rule. If I’m really naughty, or they have one of their Grownup Discussions, and everyone gets all cross, we can only be cross ‘til bedtime. Because it’s not allowed, going to bed being cross.”

It must be nice, Bucky thought, to be automatically forgiven by bedtime. Then again, he was a Bad Boy, and Millie obviously wasn’t. The sort of horrible things he did weren’t the sort of thing that could just be washed away when bedtime came around. “What if you’re bad after bedtime?”

Millie pulled a face. “Like if I won’t put my toys away and get into bed. Or when I spat toothpaste at Daddy because I was cross…”

“You spat at your Daddy?!” Bucky didn’t even want to imagine what would happen to him if he did that. Spitting was very, very naughty.

“I was cross.” Millie looked upset, but maybe a little bit defiant too. “Mommy wasn’t home, and she said she’d be home for bedtime. But Daddy said it was time to go to bed, and he wouldn’t _listen_.”

“We had a talk about that, when I got home from work, didn’t we?” Maggie didn’t sound particularly angry, which surprised Bucky. Obviously, it wasn’t her that got spat at, but still, he expected her to sound at least a little bit annoyed.

Millie pouted, but nodded her head. “Yeah. Mommy’s like a superhero, but at the hospital. She doesn’t get to wear a shiny costume or have special powers, but she rescues people who are really poorly. Sometimes it means she can’t be home on time, though, and misses bedtime.”

“Daddy misses bedtime sometimes too,” Bucky hated it, but at least he had his talking book, and there was always someone to tuck him in at night, even when he secretly wished they could be Daddy instead.

“Captain America does a lot of superhero stuff. He must miss _a lot_ of bedtimes,” Millie said sadly. “Having a Daddy that’s a superhero must be really hard.”

Bucky guessed it was, but he loved his Daddy, and being Captain America was just- who Daddy was. The Avengers had to go and save the day, even if it meant missing things they’d promised they’d do. “It’s a bit scary,” he whispered, just a little surprised at himself for saying so.

Millie seemed to understand, though, because she nodded gravely, small hands wrapped tight around Storm-Boy’s glowing paws. “I don’t like it when I don’t know when Mommy will be back. Sometimes it feels like _forever_.”

Bucky didn’t think that Maggie would come home with cuts and bruises like his daddy did, but the hospital was scary enough on its own. He hadn’t liked it when Clint had been stuck in there; not knowing what was happening or when he would be back was probably the worst bit. He didn’t think he’d cope well, if his Daddy vanished off to the hospital for ages at a time, and didn’t come back when he was supposed to.  

“Daddy got me my special book, for when he’s away. So he can still read me a bedtime story.” Bucky wasn’t sure how well he’d cope, now he was used to hearing Daddy’s voice no matter what. He thought he’d probably stay up all night feeling unsettled about it.

“Your book reads a bedtime story to you? I want one!” Millie shuffled round on her bottom, looking beseechingly at Maggie. “Can I have one, Mommy?”

Maggie looked thoughtful. “I don’t see why not. Maybe Uncle Steve can tell me where he got it from?”

“I can certainly do that.” Daddy was smiling; he understood how special their book was. “There are a few different stories to choose from. Bucky likes Sleeping Beauty.”  

“Is that your favorite story? Does Uncle Steve do all the voices? Mommy isn’t very good at doing voices, but Daddy does them all, and he always remembers whose voice is whose. Mommy forgets.” For a moment, Millie looked seriously put out. “Mommy _always_ forgets.”

“Mommy’s just rubbish at doing voices, I’m afraid,” Maggie chuckled.

Millie huffed in the most overly dramatic way possible. “Everyone either sounds like Mommy, or like Baba Kabbatt! She’s Mommy’s mommy, and she doesn’t even _speak English_. We have to translate for Daddy, though, and that’s fun!”

“Do you know how to speak another language?” Bucky asked, interested despite himself now that Bucky Bear had stopped grumbling about flashy magic bears and their potentially contagious hair loss.

Millie nodded, already rooting through the collection of toys she’d brought with her to find the one she wanted. “Yes,” she said distractedly, “Me and Mommy tell secrets, and Daddy always pulls faces and says we’re speaking in tongues.” As if to demonstrate, Millie poked out her tongue.

“It’s not nice to keep secrets, though. Don’t you get in trouble?” Bucky was beginning to think that Millie didn’t get into trouble very often, no matter how naughty she was. He was a little bit jealous, but mostly glad, because Millie was small and nice. She didn’t deserve to be punished.

“These aren’t naughty secrets, don’t worry.” Grinning, Millie offered up a handful of crayons. “Here. We can colour, and we can play bears. It’ll be fun. We can make scenery for them. Mommy! Can we have some of your paper? Please?”

Maggie chuckled, limping across the room to ruffle her daughter’s curls. “I don’t know, baby. Uncle Steve’s using the pad right now. You’ll have to ask him nicely if you can have some of the paper.”

Sighing like it was the most difficult thing in the world to walk all the way across the room to Steve’s armchair, Millie shuffled to her feet and unceremoniously shoved Storm-Boy into Bucky’s arms. Bucky Bear glared at the flamboyant bear who was suddenly right up in his space. Bucky told him to be nice.

Bucky watched as Millie skipped across the room and started tugging on Steve’s pants, then turned his attention towards Maggie, who was smiling down at him. “Hello Maggie.”

It took a moment of awkward shuffling, but Maggie got herself down onto the floor beside him, her shoulder just barely touching Bucky’s. “Hey,” she said. “How are you doing? Having fun?”

“I think so?” Bucky was certainly feeling small, now, and after a moment’s indecision he leaned a little to the side, allowing his head to settle on Maggie’s shoulder. “It’s hard. She’s a lot smaller than me.”

Maggie tipped her own head to the side, resting her ear against Bucky’s hair. “Millie’s always been small for her age. Sometimes, the bigger kids don’t want to play with her, and she feels left out. She doesn’t want to play with kids her size, because they’re normally younger, so she talks to grownups a lot instead.”

“The other kids are mean.” Bucky Bear had a long, horrible list of suggestions of what could be done to them for leaving Millie out, and Bucky couldn’t really blame him. He didn’t like the idea of anyone being left out just because they weren’t as big as the others.

“They can be, but mostly it’s because they don’t understand. Some of them think Millie’s a little kid, not grown up enough for their games, and others are scared of hurting her.” Maggie nudged Bucky gently. “You know, if I thought you were going to hurt her, I wouldn’t have brought her here, right?”

Bucky hadn’t actually thought about it like that, but all of a sudden he realized that Maggie was Millie’s _mommy_. “I can be bad, though. And I’m really strong. I could hurt her without meaning to.” Or the Asset could appear and do something really, really naughty.

“A lot of people can be bad, Bucky, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t think for a moment that you would hurt my daughter. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who wants to be good as much as you do.”

“I’m not always good, though.” Bucky worried at his thumbnail, picking at the edges until they frayed.

Maggie’s hand settled over his, stopping him from doing any more damage. “Maybe not, but that’s okay. Nobody has to be good all the time. The fact that you try, and when you’re naughty you say sorry, counts for a lot in my book.” She laughed, then, fond. “And do you really think that Millie’s anything other than a little terror at times?”

Bucky couldn’t really imagine Millie, who had climbed up onto Steve’s lap and was standing on his knees, being anywhere near as bad as Bucky himself could be. She was certainly too small to really hurt anyone.

“Oh, she looks sweet enough,” Maggie went on, chuckling under her breath. “But she throws spectacular tantrums, and once filled my bed with soil from the garden.”

“Why?!” Bucky had dirtied enough sheets by accident, he didn’t like to think about doing it on purpose.

Maggie shrugged. “I think she was growing me a garden, or making a magic potion; I don’t really remember. What I do know is that she got ever so cross with me when I put all the dirt back outside and washed the sheets.”

“It was a garden, and you _ruined_ it.” Millie didn’t sound particularly pleased, but she smiled at Bucky, showing off a few big sheets of stiff paper. “Do you want to make scenery with us, Mommy?”

“What sort of scenery are we making? We all know Mommy is rubbish at drawing.” Maggie gave Bucky another gentle nudge. “Bucky though, I bet he’s really good at it.”

Millie rolled her eyes. “Of _course_ he’s good at it. That’s why he can pick what scenery we’re doing.”

“Um.” Bucky looked down at the bears in his lap, wondering what game they would like to play. “Maybe… a castle?”

“Cool!” Millie eagerly spread the paper on the floor, then sprawled out on her belly and started colouring enthusiastically with a brown crayon. “I’ll do the front door! You can do the top bits, Bucky, with flags and stuff. Mommy can do the walls because those are easy.”

Laughing to herself, Maggie shuffled over, settling her leg into a different position so that she could reach her piece of paper. “I think I can manage some bricks.” They didn’t have a grey crayon, so Maggie picked out a black one and started drawing rectangles for bricks.

“How about I come over there and help you out?” Daddy was probably lonely, all the way across the room in his chair. Bucky reached out a hand for him, and it only took a second for Daddy to join them. “I can draw a moat, if you like?” Daddy offered, adding more paper to the pile along with the watercolour pencils Maggie had brought.

Bucky smiled, for the first time forgetting how worried he’d been about all of this. He selected a red crayon, already planning out a flag. “A moat would be good, Daddy. Millie’s front door can be the drawbridge.”

It wasn’t what he’d imagined, lingering in the hallway upstairs. He’d thought perhaps that they’d talk, or he’d be so embarrassed and afraid that he’d have to leave. Instead, Bucky found himself helping sticky tape big sheets of art paper together into the rough shape of a castle, Millie’s glowing teddy bear stranded in the middle as a hostage to be rescued.

Surprisingly, he also found himself having a great deal of fun.


End file.
